forbidden words: academic freedom, censorship, and
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Back to Volume Twelve Contents
Copyright American Association of University Professors, 2021
Forbidden Words: Academic Freedom, Censorship, and University Presses
Marc Dollinger
Abstract
A decision by Brandeis University Press to censor an invited new preface to my
book, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s,
brought to the surface a number of questions central to the protection of academic
freedom. Anonymous peer reviewers should not enjoy the power to overturn
decision-making by press officials. Discussion of race, racism, and racial privilege
must be included and protected in scholarly debate. Sometimes, academic
gatekeepers confuse what is scholarly from what is political in an abusive effort
to block academic discourse. Concerns over monetizing the academic book market
should not predetermine a book’s content. When otherwise-hidden violations of
academic freedom become part of a broad public discourse, retaliatory measures
intimidate untenured faculty, scholars of color, and women academics who fear
damage to their own careers should they speak out.
In an academic freedom controversy that eventually reached a popular
national audience, Brandeis University Press, publisher of my most recent
book, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s,
invited, approved, and then refused publication of a new preface for the
book’s fourth printing.1 The back and forth, first played out through
emails, phone calls, zooms, and later in an article and responses published
1 Marc Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018).
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by the Forward, focuses several of the most important academic freedom
questions: Who controls the dissemination of scholarly knowledge? When
does anonymous peer review, intended to strengthen scholarly writing,
become an abuse of power, an informal means of political gatekeeping?
What happens when those charged with protecting academic freedom in
the university lack the authority to do so? Finally, how do market forces
and the monetization of the university undermine the most basic
professional tenets of academic freedom?2
Just two years after the publication of Black Power, Jewish Politics, the
racial landscape of the nation changed with the videotaped murder of
George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020. Much of white
America entered a reckoning process, learning all we could about
systemic racism, historic police violence against people of color, and
especially against Black men. In the American Jewish community as well,
generations of white liberal Jews faced uncomfortable truths about their
history, their complicity in institutionalized racism, and the benefits
offered most American Jews as a privilege of their racial status. Copies of
the book, which took a critical look at the rise and fall of the interracial
alliance between Blacks and white Jews during the 1950s and 1960s, sold
at such a fast clip that the professional leadership at Brandeis University
Press asked that, for the fourth printing, I write a new preface, connecting
2 Ari Feldman, “Brandeis U. Press and a Historian Split over How to Talk about Jews and White Supremacy,” Forward, December 20, 2020, https://forward.com/news/460600/ jews-white-supremacy-brandeis-black-lives-matter/. Open letters for and against my position include Ari Y. Kelman et al., “Open Letter: Brandeis University Press Is Silencing Debate,” Forward, December 23, 2020, https://forward.com/opinion/ 460889/open-letter-brandeis-university-press-is-silencing-debate/; and Sue Berger Ramin and Sylvia Fuks Fried, “Brandeis University Press Is Fully Committed to Open Debate,” Forward, December 23, 2020, https://forward.com/opinion/letters/ 460942/letter-brandeis-university-press-is-fully-committed-to-open-debate/. For two op-eds arguing against my position, see Guila Franklin Siegel, “Talk of Jews Benefiting from White Supremacy Is Bad for Fighting It,” Forward, December 24, 2020, https://forward.com/opinion/461048/talk-of-jews-benefiting-from-white-supremacy-is-bad-for-fighting-it/; and Jonathan S. Tobin, “A Toxic Race Curriculum Has No Place in Jewish Schools,” JNS, December 23, 2020, https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-toxic-race-curriculum-has-no-place-in-jewish-schools/.
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the themes of my research with the current-day realities of race in
America.3
At 2,371 words, the “New Preface” opened with a reference to Floyd’s
murder and the national reckoning on race that followed. “Not since the
civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, if not the Reconstruction era
after the American Civil War,” I affirmed, “has the issue of racism reached
as deep in the national psyche.” Acknowledging American Jews who
“joined the call” by “protesting in the streets, rallying friends and
neighbors on social media, or beginning their own accounting on racism
in America,” I credited “Jewish leaders both lay and professional” for
taking “a new look at their organizations as almost all-white entities.”
The “New Preface” tracked developments in the movement for racial
justice, celebrating “a public pronouncement that would have seemed
impossible to make just a few years earlier.” For example, Bend the Arc:
Jewish Action, the nation’s leading progressive Jewish organization, took
the unprecedented step of securing the signatures of over six hundred
Jewish organizations in a full-page newspaper ad that proclaimed, “We
speak with one voice when we say, unequivocally: Black Lives Matter.”4
I noted that on a much grander scale, white American Jews stepped up,
mobilizing “across geographic, economic, generational lines,” contrasting
with the earlier civil rights movement when most northern suburban Jews
remained on the sidelines. “In brand-new synagogue, JCC and other
Jewish community-based lectures,” my contested preface affirmed,
“white American Jews demand to know the contours of a centuries-long
history of Jewish support, complicity or benefit from institutional
racism.”5
3 The unedited “New Preface” can be found at https://marcdollinger.com/new-preface/. 4 Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, “Majority of American Jews in Full Page New York Times Ad: ‘Unequivocally: Black Lives Matter,’” August 28, 2020, https://www.bendthearc.us/american_jews_black_lives_matter. 5 Yonat Shimron, “He Claimed White Jews Gained from White Supremacy: New He’s More Popular than Ever,” RNS, March 12, 2021, https://religionnews.com/2021/ 03/12/he-was-shot-down-for-suggesting-white-jews-benefitted-from-white-supremacy-now-hes-more-popular-than-ever/.
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The “New Preface” included white Jewish concerns over the rise in
anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and even antisemitic sentiment among some on
the left. “Even as this book details Jewish organizational leaders who
downplayed the significance and threat posed by antisemitism among
some in the Black community in the mid-1960s,” I wrote, “contemporary
Jews have raised alarm bells over the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and at times
antisemitic statements of some Black activists.” In response, I noted, some
white Jews demanded “that Black civil rights leaders repudiate their
colleagues as a pre-condition for activism.” Those concerns grew “so large
that they soon became the most frequently asked question in each and
every one of my community-based Jewish social justice lectures, whether
or not the subject of the Black Lives Matter movement was included in the
talk.” In a coda to this tension between the communities, I asked whether
“white Jews [would] make their support for racial equality contingent on
Black support for the State of Israel and Zionism?”
I also reflected on Jews of color (JoCs) and the microaggressions and
outright racism they experience in white Jewish spaces. In a line that later
evoked the ire of the publisher, I argued that “Jews of Color have been
erased from almost all of the historical literature in American Jewish
history, this book included.” These omissions matter. American Jewry’s
“rising consciousness about the presence of JoCs and their exclusion from
most of organized Jewish life goes to the heart of a new and important
historiographic challenge in the study of Jewish participation in the civil
rights movement.” In fact, even the phrase “Black-Jewish relations,” I
reminded readers, “implies Jewish whiteness.” Reflecting on feedback I
had received from Jews of Color Initiative founder and executive director
Ilana Kaufman, the preface asked what if “a person was both Black and
Jewish? How would that challenge our historical as well as contemporary
understandings of what it means to be Jewish in America?”6 In response,
I called for scholars to “re-visit this history through a lens of racial
privilege, investigating the ways this era’s Jewish activism should also be
understood as a reflection of Jewish whiteness, power, and privilege.” If
6 Jews of Color Initiative, “Building and Advancing the Field for Jews of Color,” https://jewsofcolorinitiative.org/.
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successful, “each of the chapters would be refocused away from the
Americanist or 1960s-centered historical rationales I posited in favor of
one that embraces a racially-sensitive analysis of events.”
Most of all, the “New Preface” showed how American Jewish
historical memory on questions of social justice often conflicts with the
actual history, both during the civil rights movement of the immediate
postwar years as well as in contemporary understandings of race and
racism in the United States.
Romanticized notions of Jewish support for racial justice in the
early post-war years tended to universalize the friendship
between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua
Heschel as a metaphor for all Blacks and Jews. While many
American Jews remember a consensus-based inter-racial alliance
that brought a disproportionate number of white Jews in solidarity
with Black activists, the historical literature also tells of Jewish
organizational leaders who understood the depth of institutional
racism, the limits of white Jewish liberalism, and the inevitability
of Black Power’s rise. The political voices and strategies of Black
Americans needed centering and amplification, they argued,
while Black Power–inspired tactics could model a Jewish
ethnoreligious revival.
While it offered hope for a new interracial alliance in the current era, the
“New Preface” challenged white Jewish liberals to reflect on the limits of
their commitment to racial equity.
Press leadership welcomed the finished draft, describing it as a “very
thoughtful essay” and an “excellent overview of the issues of the last two
years.” Labeling it “a strong essay,” the editorial director and executive
director offered “to try to get it placed in . . . the LA Review of Books” as
well. Even as the press editors opted to send the “New Preface” for
anonymous peer review, reporting that they “also sent the piece to
another person at Brandeis for their comments, and are waiting to hear
back,” the communication proved clear: the professionals in charge of the
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academic press approved this addition to the book’s next printing and
wanted to see it read by as many people as possible.7
What is considered best practice in a situation such as this? Should a
new preface, invited by an academic press for inclusion in an already-
published book, be subject to anonymous peer review? On one level, a
case can be made that it should. As scholars, we should seek the best
possible academic writing. Safeguarding the anonymity of reviewers is a
must, especially for those who write in small fields where almost
everyone knows one another. Only by keeping reviewers anonymous can
academic press editors and their editorial committees obtain the most
honest, critical, and truthful feedback. Armed with that specialized
knowledge, university presses are better able to determine what they
should publish and what they need to reject.
Only this time, the anonymous peer review process upended
professional standards and harmed academic freedom. Just one day after
the press’s editorial team approved the “New Preface,” another email
arrived reversing that decision. “We sent the essay out to some other
readers and now have their responses back,” the executive director of the
press wrote. “We know that the subject generates controversy and
engenders different opinions.” As a result, the email continued, “We have
made the decision to go ahead and reprint the book as is.” Alluding to the
power held by the anonymous reviewer, the communication ended, “I
know this is a change from my last email but we do have to take a wide
range of opinions into account.”8
A focus on the press’s internal review process raises academic
freedom alarm bells. First, a preface should not be sent for anonymous peer
review. Unlike a book manuscript, a preface is not scholarly. Second, an
invited preface should not be sent for anonymous peer review. When a
press asks an author to write a new preface, it is essentially preapproving
the content. Third, an accepted invited preface should not be sent for
7 Email to the author from the Brandeis University Press editorial director, October 13, 2020. 8 Email to the author from the Brandeis University Press editorial director, October 14, 2020.
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anonymous peer review. Anonymous peer reviewers should not be able
to exert more power than an academic press’s own professional team.
Fourth, the decision to reverse their publication decision occurred
without the knowledge of the author. The right to academic freedom
should permit a scholar to address concerns in their writing.
The troubling decision-making process described above masked
deeper content-based concerns about the “New Preface” and its
discussion of Black Lives Matter, the nation’s racial reckoning, and the
racial positioning of most American Jews in the postwar era. While abuse
of the anonymous review process undermined academic freedom, the
press’s decision to censor specific content proves even more telling, and
chilling. In this case, an attempt to speak truth about a complicated history
of Jews, whiteness, power, privilege, and racism resulted in a dramatic
abridgement of academic freedom.
The words “white supremacy” upset the anonymous reviewer. While
the “New Preface” was not a reflection on white supremacy per se, it did
use these words in a paragraph building to a larger historical point.
“Physically distant from the nation’s urban centers,” I wrote, “suburban
Jews lamented their lack of proximity to communities of color and the
ways in which the last few generations of American Jewish social mobility
have reinforced elements of white supremacy in their own lived
experience.” The assertion that American Jews’ social mobility gained
traction from a system of white supremacy, it seemed, crossed the line of
acceptable historical argumentation. The only remedy: censorship.
In addition to being upset over use of the words “white supremacy,”
the anonymous reviewer also challenged use of the word “erased,” as
noted above, to describe the near-total absence of Jews of color from the
historiography. This assertion should not have met resistance. The
exclusion of marginalized populations from academic literature is well
documented across the disciplines. Calling this out in American Jewish
history did not seem too radical a claim. By acceding to the reviewer’s
concern, the press empowered an anonymous academic gatekeeper to
determine which topics get debated and which ones do not.
Underlying the press’s concerns about evoking the erasure of Jews of
color, the “New Preface” also faced criticism from the editorial director
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for adopting “too apologetic” a tone. As first described in the book’s
epilogue, Black Power, Jewish Politics did not consider the historical
experience of Black Jews, an error that demands correction as the
historiography develops. Because I embraced that critique, and repeated
it in the “New Preface,” the press pushed back, challenging the very
notion of scholarly critique, reflection, and revision as core tenets of our
work as academics.
We must welcome criticism, take time to assess its validity in our
research, and change our arguments if we find it warranted. Academic
freedom must protect scholars who are willing to change their minds on
their own conclusions. Naming “white supremacy” and “erasure” proved
a bridge too far, and showing the humility necessary to include those
words also brought rebuke. In this case, it seemed as if deeper concerns
about the telling of racism in US history proved more important than
providing a platform for its debate.
Academic freedom, at its heart, must protect scholars who wish to
advance discomforting theses. University presses, more than trade
presses to be sure, must protect academic freedom by publishing
challenging arguments, especially when they shake up conventional
wisdom and thinking. At no point should concerns from anonymous
reviewers stop an important academic debate even before it has a chance
to begin. This is even more important when the topic is as contentious,
fraught, and emotion-filled as American racism. Here we find an
uncomfortable nexus between academic freedom and larger social justice
freedom movements. Restricting the former challenges the latter.
Anonymous peer review should not be abused as a cover to stifle the free
exchange of ideas. No anonymous reviewer should possess that much
authority over discourse and no university press should accede to their
censorship demands. Upset and debate is acceptable. Compromising
academic freedom is not.
Beyond questions of the role of anonymous reviewers or the need for
university presses to publish contentious content, this controversy also
engaged the influence of capitalism and the monetization of scholarly
books. Officials at the press insisted that the decision to “go to press” so
quickly did not result from political disagreements or from an
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abandonment of academic freedom. Instead, they argued, time was of the
essence. Just 115 copies remained at the warehouse and any sort of delay
would leave the shelves bare. The press couldn’t allow time for a rewrite
of the “New Preface” without risking lost book sales.
In addition, the editorial leadership of the press expressed an
anonymous reviewer’s concern that the “New Preface” itself would harm
book sales. To make claims regarding white supremacy and erasure, to
apologize for academic failures in the book, it seemed, would discourage
potential readers from purchasing the book or recommending it to their
friends. This, too, violates key principles undergirding academic freedom
and distinguishing academic presses from their cousins in the trade
market. The job of an academic press is to publish the best scholarly work
available, without regard for its financial consequences.
Some years ago, in a story that I still find amusing, an academic press
representative tried to convince me to publish with them because they
budgeted a $7,500 loss on every book they published. Even though it
sounds backward, this academic press wanted me to know they were
more committed to academic freedom, to the advancement of knowledge,
than they were to financial profit. This academic press official
communicated an important point: scholarly books don’t make money.
They are not intended to be a profit center for their universities. Instead,
administrators plan on losing money in order to protect their mission of
advancing knowledge. Academic freedom demands that university
presses place the advance of scholarly knowledge at the center, without
pressure for scholars to tailor their words to promote book sales.
The press’s concerns over the bottom line also raise deeper questions
about how market-based priorities provided cover for content-based
censorship. As several scholars would later remark, the book sold out its
first three print runs because of its thesis around Jews, race, and racism.
The “New Preface,” then, if anything, would have promoted book sales,
since it would continue speaking to the very audience already interested
in, and buying, the book. If boosting book sales was going to enter the
academic publishing equation, it should have encouraged inclusion of the
“New Preface.”
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So why did the press fear that publishing the “New Preface” would
harm future book sales? Why would a good-selling book all of a sudden
reverse its sales numbers? Because the identities of the peer reviewers as
well as their written reports remain hidden, we don’t know. One could
conclude that the book’s thesis, accepted in the initial anonymous review
process, did not land as well on a different pair of academics selected to
comment on the “New Preface.” Perhaps one reviewer’s treasure is
another reviewer’s trash. If this proved to be the case, then it’s all the more
reason to platform scholarly debate by publishing it. In some kind of
irony, it seems, the press may have permitted the individual concerns of
an anonymous reviewer to censor the very content that could have
increased its profits.
Since the “New Preface” was not going to be a part of the book, and
honoring the press’s view that it would land better as an op-ed, I
suggested that the press publish it as an opinion piece in the Brandeis
University–sponsored alumni magazine. This compromise proposal
brought the issue of academic freedom into focus yet again. Was the
decision not to publish the “New Preface” a legitimate act of scholarly
critique or was it rooted in an attempt to squelch discussion of white
supremacy and Jews of color? If the professional staff at the press believed
that the “New Preface” deserved publication, though not in a scholarly
book, then this compromise addressed those concerns. The press refused
to pitch the idea to the magazine, claiming it rarely enjoyed success in
such proposals. More and more, it seemed the press objected to the
content itself, refusing to help advance the words into print, regardless of
format.
Next, I asked the press leadership for permission to share the “New
Preface” with four of the leading scholars in the field, hoping it would
bring a reconsideration. As I wrote to the press after their reviews arrived,
“The response has been overwhelming, both in the depth of the
commentary and the intellectual and professional upset about what has
transpired.” Two scholars criticized the “New Preface” for not going far
enough. One offered that the piece was actually “too scholarly” and failed
to adequately call out Jewish complicity in systemic racism today. The
other asked me “to go further than you already have” in the critique. One
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reviewer wrote, “I also appreciate your candor about how you might have
rewritten certain pieces with the insights you’ve gained from
conversations with Jews of Color.” Another described the press’s call for
a more scholarly new preface “absurd,” sending a separate unsolicited
email with just four words: “I would fight this.”
Most of the feedback centered on the press’s use of anonymous peer
reviewers and its willingness to reverse its publication decision as a result.
This “smacks of outside political pressure which is itself unconscionable,”
one wrote, while another reflected that it was “totally unprofessional from
an ostensibly independent, academic, intellectually committed press.” 9
Playing on both gender and seniority, several reviewers called for broad
discourse in the field, the academy, and beyond. They encouraged me to
continue pushing back. Scholars without the protection of tenure as well
as faculty of color and women face a more challenging professional
environment should this occur to them.
Compiling comments into an email report, I submitted the feedback
to the press, concluding with the following paragraph:
I am convinced that the press erred in its decision not to print the
New Preface. As I stated in an earlier email, I believe that we are
at an inflection point in our profession. It seems to me that the
anonymous reviewer(s) critiques reveal a pedagogy that’s no
longer accepted in the field. The line between scholarship and
politics, especially on a book in political history, cannot be easily
separated. The identity categories of the author, especially if it’s a
white author writing on Black Power, matter. That the press has
applied this scholarly standard to a non-scholarly new preface is
also problematic. Ironically, the call to make the New Preface more
scholarly and less political is itself a political act, especially when
it’s done in the shadows. I ask that you reconsider your decision
not to publish the New Preface.10
9 Email to the author from the Brandeis University Press editorial director, November 30, 2020. 10 Email from the author, November 30, 2020.
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Since the print edition of the book was, by now, in production, I asked
the press to add the “New Preface” to the electronic edition of the book,
along with a promise that they would include it in the print edition should
it sell out its current run. In a short reply, the press refused the offer,
writing, “We are very sorry that you feel that your views and those of the
press are divergent.” Then, the press proposed “that we sell through the
reprint and then revert the rights to you so that you can publish the book
in the way that you think fit.” Their unsolicited return of the book rights
landed as a doubling-down in their abandonment of academic freedom.
Given the choice between publishing the “New Preface” or walking away
from the entire book, the press chose the latter. Releasing the rights to the
book, it seemed, proved an easier pill to swallow than seeing the “New
Preface” in print, under the press’s aegis.
With more and more scholars hearing of the unfolding controversy,
word leaked to the national Jewish press and led to a feature article in the
Forward, the national Jewish newspaper of record. While the article
focused on the preface’s use of the words “white supremacy,” a topic of
keen interest for many of the newspaper’s readers, media coverage of the
controversy escalated academic freedom concerns. In the quotes it
provided to the newspaper, the press fired a warning shot across
academia’s bow: challenge the internal review procedures and risk public,
professional, and personal retaliation.11
Even though the decision to reject the “New Preface” occurred before
any opportunity for a rewrite, news coverage reported that “the directors
of the press see an author who refused to accept constructive criticism.”
A press official, after boasting of a “long track record at Brandeis of
publishing cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields,” concluded
that “the only thing we’re uncomfortable with is bad scholarship,”
implying that the “New Preface” fit that description. Another press
official characterized the “New Preface” as “not only wrong but deeply
hurtful” before accusing scholars critical of the press’s decision of
engaging in cancel culture, bullying, and “doing great harm.” At its worst,
11 Ari Feldman, “Brandeis U. Press and a Historian Split over How to Talk about Jews and White Supremacy.”
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and in a public challenge to my emotional stability, the press concluded
that my decision to challenge its decision could only have occurred since
I was “under a great deal of pressure.”12
This public rebuke landed on scholars who feared the implicit
message it was sending to more vulnerable faculty. As several female
colleagues related to me (privately), if this is what happens to a senior
white male colleague who dares challenge the system, can you imagine
what it would be like for the rest of us? An untenured colleague, reflecting
on her own race-themed manuscript-in-progress, communicated simply,
“They’re not ready for me yet.”
Samira Mehta, assistant professor in the department of Women and
Gender Studies and the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of
Colorado at Boulder, wrote a piercing analysis of the racial and gender
power dynamics play in an as-yet unpublished article. “When The Forward
article came out,” she wrote, “my social media feed was filled with Jewish
Studies scholars condemning Brandeis University Press for their actions.
I remained quiet, not because I do not care, but because I have been
hesitating about whether to say anything and if I spoke, what to say about
the piece, especially given my own experiences of persistent racism in
Jewish Studies as a field.”
Mehta, a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award and a full-time
academic at a major research university, should have little reason to fear
for her professional future. On these matters, she enjoys strong
institutional support on her campus. Yet she wonders about her future in
the academy “if we cannot, as scholars, talk about Jews and white
supremacy at the historical distance of 50 years.” With this episode, Mehta
argues, “Brandeis’s decision means that there is one less press for junior
scholars who are working on race issues, at a time when resources are
shrinking overall. It also means that junior scholars working on race need
to worry that if they do responsible work examining overlapping
privilege and power they risk being marginalized in the field.”
Interrogating the gender and racial power dynamics at play, Mehta
noted that this experience did not bring me professional harm and in fact
12 Feldman, “Brandeis U. Press and a Historian.”
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raised my public profile. Several other academic presses made unsolicited
offers to publish the book with its “New Preface” included. “The fact that
this is going well for him,” Mehta notes, “is a mark of his privilege—the
earned privilege of his academic reputation but more importantly the
privilege of a white Jewish man in Jewish Studies. Other scholars, junior
scholars, women scholars, scholars of color, would likely not fare so well.”
At her most blunt, Mehta concluded, “If a senior scholar with all of the
white, male, ‘Ashkenormative’ privilege of Marc Dollinger finds himself
censored as a bad scholar for how he represents white supremacy and
Jews, his example tells me that I certainly cannot do that work as a
relatively junior scholar who is a Brown, female, Jew-by-Choice.”
This is the greatest threat to academic freedom. When presses are able
to make examples out of the most-protected scholars, it sends a clear
message to everyone else in the academy: keep quiet, don’t complain, and
leave the abusive power structures in place. When future manuscripts
sent for anonymous peer review center on issues of racism and white
supremacy, and include the lived experiences of people of color,
academia’s ability to publish quality scholarship faces increased threat,
and academic freedom faces its biggest test
After publication of the news article, a group of nine leading scholars
issued a public no-confidence letter to the press. “The role of scholarship
is to use critical tools of research and interpretation to open conversations,
not shut them down . . . ,” they wrote. “We are reliant on responsible
editors who value academic freedom, even when our scholarship puts
forward challenging or new ideas.” They concluded that “the press has
vacated its responsibility to its author, our field, and the public. Our trust
in the Brandeis University Press has been eroded.”13
In response, the press wrote that it was “happy to report that for the
first time in its history, Brandeis University Press as an independent
university press has a new academic editorial board . . . to review the
present situation and Brandeis University Press’s procedures more
13 Kelman et al., “Open Letter.”
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generally. We will be looking closely at the role of series editors, the peer
review process, and the author-editor revision process.”14
The academic editorial board investigation gives Brandeis University
Press the opportunity to reaffirm the importance of academic freedom
and the vital role university presses play in its protection. By recognizing
the errors it made and instituting guardrails to ensure they never happen
again, Brandeis University Press could start to regain the trust and
confidence it has lost in this process. More important, it could become,
once again, a locus point for critical debate on the most important social
issues of the day.
Marc Dollinger is a professor and Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Jewish
studies and social responsibility at San Francisco State University.
14 Ramin and Fried, “Brandeis University Press Is Fully Committed to Open Debate.”